Talk:Gunfight at the O.K. Corral/Archive 2

Glenn Boyer again
I'm removing a gushing paragraph about Glenn G. Boyer in this article. There is no evidence that Boyer ever met Earp's Josie/Sadie Marcus (who died in 1944 when Boyer was in his early 20's), and indeed there indirect evidence against it, as he certainly would have mentioned such a meeting in his 1955 letter to Stuart Lake, which survives. See http://home.earthlink.net/~knuthco1/IMWEfiles2/curiousvendettasource.htm which probably should be referenced in this article if there is any more Boyerism. Moreover, there is no evidence that Boyer had access to anything other than the Cason manuscript in writing I married Wyatt Earp and therefore anything he/she says about the Tombstone years is suspect. It is third hand at best and fiction at worst. Boyer has also been caught making up worse stuff, see the link above. Certainly Boyer's contention (supposedly from Sadie that Wyatt avenged Warren's death in 1900, provably wrong (see the link above) as is the idea that Earp visited Holliday the day before Holliday died. Boyer is not to be trusted. S  B Harris 21:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this posting of the above link. It was quite helpful. I apologize for not having been aware of this insightful and well-researched article. On the issue of who started the fight, however, I note that the Inquest MS and Spicer's own analysis indicated the Billy Clanton was hit while drawing his gun. This shot came almost certainly from Morgan Earp. In addition, there is the testimony of Martha J. King in the Butcher Shop about the exchange between Wyatt and Morgan while walking past. I have not seen any evidence that would contradict this claim. On "I Married Wyatt Earp", one can follow much of what Boyer put in from Lake's material, which is fairly transparent, so things may not be as bad as they seem. In addition, memories do fade, and years get mixed around. Wyatt and Virgil COULD HAVE carred out revenge for Warren's murder, but the dating may have been off. In fact, who could know? Still, the article you have posted has seriously undermined Boyer's credibility for me as a researcher and writer, and while some of what is in "I Married Wyatt Earp" must be true (for instance, why would Josie imply that Wyatt's stipulated account was perjured if that was not the case? Is this just Boyer inserting his opinion into her mouth, so to speak?), and parts of it are obviously slanted to keep Josie from appearing to have been "not a nice person" for being first Johnny Behan's commonlaw wife and then Wyatt's, with hardly a transition, but this is all reflective of authenticity, it seems to be me. The difficult part now would seem to be sorting out anything that might be deliberate fiction, such as the episode surrounding Warren's murder.Doktorschley (talk) 06:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks again.Doktorschley (talk) 12:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, you might want to consider putting the actual article into the references in the wiki article itself: Jeffrey J. Morey, "The Curious Vendetta of Glenn G. Boyer", in Quarterly of the National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History (NOLA), Vol. XVIII, No. 4, Oct.-Dec., 1994, p. 22-28. This piece is full of astute analysis and treatment of primary documents.Doktorschley (talk) 12:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Sure, let's think of a way to get it in, and where it should go as a reference. S  B Harris 06:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it should be a detailed critical footnote, in conjunction with "I married Wyatt Earp"...something like, "For a better understanding of the sources we are dealing with, see...."Doktorschley (talk) 05:13, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

"Strength" of Cowboys
Can someone explain what this stat in the infobox indicates? My first assumption would be that it means how many Cowboys participated in the fight, but it says "2-6 (?)" as if there was some doubt about it when the number of fighters seems pretty well substantiated; and since three of them died, the number of course would have to be at least three, leaving me either puzzled as to where the "2" comes from or puzzled as to what the stat means in the first place.  Mbinebri  talk &larr; 03:03, 23 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't construct the infobox. It think it was made by somebody with battle "infoboxitis." The figure for the cowboys probably comes from somebody figuring how many were armed. That could have been as small as 2 (Billy and Frank), even though 3 indeed were killed. S  B Harris 01:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Wyatt Unhit?
I just returned from Tombstone's "Helldorado Days". They said Wyatt Earp was a lousy shot in reality;  the fact he wasn't hit at the shootout notwithstanding. He let Doc Holliday do the real shooting for him.68.231.189.108 (talk) 02:05, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * He was unhit all his life. This might as easily have been luck, as it was with George Washington and Douglas MacArthur, who also seemed bulletproof. Though his contemporaries like Masterson praised Wyatt's marksmanship, nobody knows how good he was with a pistol, as there's no clearly documented Wyatt Earp kill (or even hit) WITH a pistol. Wyatt shot a lot of buffalo, and it wouldn't surprise me if he was better with a rifle. Wyatt's two kills were with a shotgun. On the other hand, Doc's only really sure kill was with a shotgun, as well! Shotguns are outstanding weapons in a close gunfight, and neither law enforcement or the badguys are interested in fighting "fair" in any gunfight. S  B Harris 07:04, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of Frank Stilwell biography proposed
It has been proposed to delete the biography of Frank Stilwell, due to notability problems. You are invited to go to Articles_for_deletion/Frank_Stilwell, and leave any opinions you have about this matter. S B Harris 02:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

rediscovered notes
original notes discovered. This might be useful for improving the article quality --63.239.65.11 (talk) 12:13, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

American Civil War
I've removed the following tagged, uncited statement from the lede:
 * In other views, the fight was a more complex embodiment of some of the tensions of the American Civil War of a generation before.

It was tagged as uncited 12 months ago, and I can't find any citation or even any mention in the rest of the article. --TS 15:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

gunfight "reads more like a story than an encyclopedia entry"
I love this whole page although whoever wrote large portions of it need to be clearer about sourcing.

I'm thinking that if that banner has been there since 08 either nobody agrees or nobody can make it better.

I disagree that it reads like a story. It seems to try to show so many perspectives that it ends up being an awkward difficult read. It tells how different people on different sides saw the events. If in reading that a story evolves in the mind of the reader that's not a problem with the writing.

The banner at the top has been there for 13 months. The one at this section, 37 months.

I don't agree that it's too much like a story or that it is not neutral.

I lobby for removing the story banners here and at the "Context" section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackhammer111 (talk • contribs) 22:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've cleaned it up a bit in the past week, but it still contains conclusions and ideas that are not supported by any sources. I think it still reads too much like a story and needs work. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 00:35, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Just be careful of removing stuff that isn't concluded in any sources, unless you're pretty sure you know what's in the major sources. The reading list of books at the end of this article and those at the ends of the bio articles on Wyatt Earp and Doc are the minimal reading list, especially the Inquest and Spicer transcripts given in Turner (which are the 90% of what anybody really "knows" about this event). The Glenn Boyer book I Married Wyatt Earp has been rightly deprecated and has been deemed totally untrustworthy by historians. The original Stuart Lake book that made Wyatt famous is a mixed bag. Lake was a newspaperman who could, and did, make up colorful stories where he didn't have any facts. However, much of the stuff in Lake (not all of it) is coorborated in the Flood manuscript, which (while horribly written), must have been more or less as Wyatt told it to Flood, because Flood had few others sources than Wyatt. (For example, Flood didn't have the Spicer manuscripts, and Lake did. And of course, Lake also had Flood and asked a few questions of Wyatt himself. The problem is that Lake never documented what Earp hold him personally). This is a problem on WP, since Flood was never published and isn't available online (Flood died in 1959, so it won't pass into public domain until around 2029, as I read US copyright law). I do have a photocopy of that manuscript, as typed by Flood himself, and I tend to give more credence to things that appear in BOTH Flood and Lake. And of course all of the modern (post 1990) biographers of the Earps and Holliday have made extensive use of Flood. Anyway to summarize, the article as it stands is somewhat stitched together in summarizing the modern biographies of the era, and we've more or less gotten rid of Boyer. I don't think there's much pure fantasizing left, although a full analysis of what everybody has said about this, would take a book-length article. So the question is what to leave out. Just about everything here, is a summary of some somebody else wrote and published SOMEPLACE. Even if the ref isn't here, yet. Discuss on talk page before major cutting (unless you're cutting Boyer, of course).  S  B Harris 02:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Sbharris, since you are blessed with a copy of the Flood manuscript, you are in the enviable position of being well situated to make any cuts that are not corroborated by both texts. Although you can't cite the Flood text as a source, your edits citing Lake's biography would certainly be more accurate than the unsourced content that is there now. I haven't taken a look to see what else specifically should be axed, perhaps you ought to. Anything that seems speculative or borders on making conclusions without supporting REFS ought to be removed IMO. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 07:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The Flood manuscript can be quoted secondarily where it as quoted by Barra and others. That's not the problem that worries me most. The real problem here is that much of history-writing consists of "filling in the blanks" where we use our human understanding to infer things that are not directly said, in the manner of the Cyc computer database, except that we do a lot more of it. And you have to be willing to do it. For example, Virgil says in his Spicer testimony that since Doc was wearing a long coat, he gave Doc his shotgun so that citizens wouldn't be upset seeing a man armed with a shotgun walking through town. Virgil, in turn, took Doc's cane. Now, you have to be a human being to INFER that Doc got the shotgun BECAUSE he could hide it under his long coat. Virgil never says this. Similarly, you have to INFER that Virgil kept Doc's cane, and carried it in his right hand (he was right handed) and did this for a reason, and not out of some fit of absent-mindedness that caused him to carry a clothing accessory into a deadly gunfight when he could easily have handed it off to a bystander to take care of. And that this reason was not that he intended to use it as a spear, or to bonk Frank McLaury over the head with, or something of that nature. Rather, in keeping with hiding the shotgun, and also not drawing his own pistol from his pants, Virgil was attempting to look nonthreatening. Nearly all historians have inferred this (take a look). And yet you've deleted it. This kind of thing turns Wikipedia into a battleground of people behaving as though they were autistic or schizophrenic, unable to guess why people do any of the things they do, if it's not spelled out for them. I'd like such people to stay away from history articles. I hope you're not going to be like that. S  B Harris 06:14, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not interested in battling about anything. I'd gladly defer to someone with better expertise. If the kind of inferences you describe have been made by historians and researchers, then I suppose they can be attributed and sourced. This article has been so poorly referenced that it's pretty hard to tell what's some individual has made up vs. a professional inference. Since you have the relevant documents, you obviously have a much higher degree of expertise--and interest--than I do. I've been motivated to clean it up because I have a interest in western history and it's a high-profile article that was so over-written and full of what I saw as speculation. Please, feel free to re-add the cane bit and other parts like it and add the relevant sources. All well-sourced information is good! I'll gladly support that. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 08:32, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Make this article a candidate for deletion?
I think this article should be a candidate for deletion. There is no historical significance of this obscure so-called gunfight. I've never even heard of it. What justifies this fight to have it's own page and not any of the other gunfights between gangs that occur yearly in America's inner cities? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.231.231.231 (talk) 14:41, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * You are of course free to register an account and propose the article for deletion, but I suggest that first you read the article to understand the significance of the event. I'm sure there are many other things you've never heard of, but that doesn't mean their articles should be deleted.  --CliffC (talk) 19:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I hope you are not just trolling. Why don't you do a Google search on it? It's probably the most famous gunfight in American history, whether you think it should be or not (and I'm not going to attempt to tell you why-- read the article, plus Earp vendetta ride). The page itself gets 35,000 to 45,000 views a month, which is quite respectable for any Wikipedia article. There are very few historical events lasting less than a day 130 years ago that do anything as close to as well. The James A. Garfield assassination, an event that happened less than three months before the O.K. Corral gunfight, gets only 7,000 to 8,000 views a month. S  B Harris 19:27, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Best not to feed it. --CliffC (talk) 20:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

A clear example of the bias in wikipedia. If you don't agree with someone, they are a troll. I haven't ever heard of this gunfight, but you wikipedia editors think the article about the gunfight that took out Tupac is worth deleting, and he's affected more lives than these white boys mentioned in the page here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.231.231.231 (talk) 04:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Archive due
This talk page contains comments from as far back as 2006. I suggest it's about time for an archive. I've archived talk pages once or twice, but would gladly defer to someone who's more practiced with the procedure. I suggest archiving everything from the beginning to "Glenn Boyer Again". -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 08:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Archived through Jan 31, 2009 completed. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 01:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Titles and details
I have forgotten that Virgil was once elected constable. He lost an election as town sheriff to Sippy. I believe Wyatt never ran for any office.

The offices of sheriff, undersheriff, U.S. marshal, etc. are all generally  not capitalized, as offices are not proper nouns. When used as a title WITH a name, as in Sheriff Behan, then I believe they become proper nouns and can be capitalized. Thus, we don't capitalize "mayor" but do capitalize Mayor Clum. A little Googling shows this is a confusing point for many people on the web, but I think it's correct. Capitalize only proper nouns.

Good work on the details and cites, Btphelps! Though the fact that a stage was robbed at 10 PM might go over the top. S B Harris 02:06, 12 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification on the capitalization and the compliment. If there's anything that's over the top and can be removed to make it more concise, please be bold. It still needs some more citations. I left a few doubtful points in for which I could not find citations and marked them with . -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 16:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Ongoing edits
I've been gradually trying to weed out the story-telling tone-of-voice, reduce wordiness, correct grammar, improve clarity, and add references. I don't have access to any manuscripts or books, so if I get something wrong, please correct it. There are several instances when the Cowboy point-of-view is written about but no references are provided and I can't find any. I've left some content for which I cannot find a ready reference in for now. If I remove something for which you can provide a reference, my apologies in advance. Please fix it. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 00:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * There are two references in the content to a mystery gunman who shot at the Earps from behind. I can only find one reference to this incident on a commercial tourist site in Tombstone that does not appear to measure up as a reliable source. I can not find any reference to this mystery shots in any mainstream publications and am going to remove this as a fringe theory. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 08:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I just did a little work in the section on the Clantons.Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I've completed an edit of the entire article, removing the story-telling tone (and template tags) and adding substantial detail and many references. There are still some timeline inconsistencies, a few grammar issues, and some other minor details needing cleaning up. I'm going to take a little break and come back in a week or so so I can have a fresh perspective. If anyone else wants to clean it up, feel free. -- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 21:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Arizona War military infobox
The use of the military infobox on this article is an inappropriate use of that infobox. It was labeled "Arizona War" which redirected to the Earp Vendetta Ride until I renamed it to the redirected page. The Earp Vendetta Ride does not have that infobox, while a Google search doesn't produce any relevant records of an "Arizona War" having to do with the Earps. The Military Conflict infobox was created by same person who created the category. I believe both the infobox and the category are of dubious value and should be removed. I suggest an alternate category that is more germane to all the individuals involved and affected. Since the overall series of events were not restricted to Tombstone, I suggest "Cochise County history" or "Cochise County frontier violence". — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 05:23, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

"Arizona War" is now "Earp - Cowboy Conflict"
The articles Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Earp Vendetta Ride contained military infoboxes for the "battles" and a navigation box titled "Arizona War."

I didn't understand the use of the "war" analogy to the Earp / Cowboy conflict and could not find any public sources that supported that usage, specifically "Arizona War," so I've killed the infoboxes and renamed the template "Earp - Cowboy Conflict". I really don't think this is sufficient however.

The GA reviewer of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral spun off The Cowboys (Cochise County) during her review. I've started to add to that article, which could be an interesting addition to the constellation of articles about the conflict and time period. I noticed while surveying a number of the bios of the various individuals that many of the articles repeat the same (and almost always uncited) facts. Rather than correct each of them--a time-consuming task--and reproduce a bunch of information in many places, I was trying to think of an alternative.

Perhaps the The Cowboys (Cochise County) article could be a central place to describe the overall conflict before and after the Earps' presence. It could include some of the background info currently found in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. As I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that we ought to last the law officers involved as well, so it still seems valid to devote an article to the Cowboys specifically.

Maybe the information about the overall conflict merits a article on its own, perhaps titled Pioneer conflict (Cochise County). — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 00:06, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I've usually thought of this economic and political conflict in Tombstone as American Civil War (part II). The federalists are northern Republican yankee protestant capitalists and businessmen. They come from both coasts, large cities, and the midwest, like the protestant unionist republican Earps. They fought for the Union or their relatives did. They don't trust southerners, stockmen, rednecks, or "cowboys" (Wyatt Earp was many things including buffalo hunter and teamster, but one thing he never was was a cowboy). "Cowboy" (please remember) originally referring to post-war drovers, usually Texans, who moved cattle from Texas to the railhead towns that Wyatt helped police.


 * On the other side are the Texans, the unhappy Confederates, the cattle rustlers, small-time short-time ranchers and rural types who've never spent much time in big cities. These people are often Roman Catholic and vote Democratic, and if they can, they stuff ballot boxes Democratic (as the Tombstone-area cowboys did in the 1880 San Simon case). Their friends are the rural law, which means the county law out where the stockmen work-- which means the sheriff. NOT the U.S. Marshal, who is a fed and representative of Washington. And not the city police chief of a mining boomtown, who is going to be picked by the mayor or elected by a bunch of businessmen and mine owners (not miners), and is certainly not going to be more Yankee than Southerner.


 * Virgil, who fought for the Union and was not only police chief but also deputy marshal, typifies just about all the types of authority a Texas cowboy might hate. And his brother Wyatt, who buffaloed many a drunken Texas cowboys as a cop, in cowtowns before Tombstone, typifies all the rest.


 * The only person who acts out of type in all of this is Doc Holliday, who is clearly on the side other than where you expect to see him. But that's Doc. Personal loyalty was always a bigger thing to him than politics. Doc is more of a "genteel Southerner," and you hardly know what he's going to do.


 * The McLaurys and Clantons look to me like Irish Southern rural Democrats of the type you might expect to call a plantation Tara if they ever had had one. Even Johnny Behan (a Catholic Irishman in a time LONG before JFK made it cool) was born a southerner in Missouri, and might have been better off if he'd stayed with the pace of life there, than trying to be a county sheriff with offices in as wicked and fast a town, as Tombstone. It got the better of him, and he was never to try that profession again. Nor, for that matter, would Wyatt...


 * Paula Mitchel Marks of Die in the West has a lot to say about all of this, and perhaps she could be used as a source for some of the deep background. S  B Harris 00:49, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I am working on a draft of a navbar but am having a challenge figuring out how to categorize the various parties. Some Cowboys were deputized lawman (Frank Stilwell, Phin Clanton); some lawmen sided with the cowboys (Johnny Behan); some Cowboys assisted the Earps (Sherman McMaster, Texas Jack Vermillion); and then there are gamblers (Doc Holiday). Please take a look and let me know what you think: draft navbar — btphelps (talk) (contribs) 17:01, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

O.K.?
What does the O.K. in "O.K. Corral" actually stand for? 188.192.118.224 (talk) 06:42, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Nobody knows. In 1881 it was a common a phase as now, although it was a bit more positive and meant "fine." The history of the phrase goes all the way back to the Van Buren Campaign, at least. See the O.K. article. S  B Harris 07:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

¶ I am curious if the OK in the name of the corral (presumably in the sign at its entrance or whatever) had periods after the letters or not (namely, OK vs. O. K.). Sussmanbern (talk) 13:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I should point out that the question is not "what does the "O.K." stand for in phrase meaning "adequate"" (which as you point out is covered in the O.K. article), but "what does the "O.K." in "O.K. Corral" stand for". To the point, is there any evidence (i.e. citations) that the "O.K." in "O.K. Corral" was supposed to be a reference to "okay", or is it mere speculation that it is referring to the phrase meaning "adequate", as opposed to some other abbreviation, like the initials of the owner or owners (e.g. Oscar Kendall or Oswald & Kennedy), or a misreading of "circle K", or just some random letters a person chose for a cattle/horse brand? -- 174.21.224.236 (talk) 06:41, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

¶  Could the name of the corral be a reference to the Oklahoma Territory  (became a State in 1907) that lay far to the east of Tombstone? Sussmanbern (talk) 13:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Re: Make this article a candidate for deletion?
I hate to say it, but I agree. This article should be deleted. There is no historical significance and the article doesn't even make a case for it being historical. Why should a random crime have it's own wikipedia article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.248.233.98 (talk) 15:36, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * There is nothing preventing you from registering an account and nominating the article for deletion. Given the large volume of scholarly and journalistic works cited by the article, combined with the world-wide name recognition of this event, do not be surprised if the deletion attempt fails and is closed early. --Allen3 talk 15:59, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Children don't grasp historical significance sometimes, especially when they want to see more pieces on Family Guy supporting characters and Lightsaber colors.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 17:19, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it was a great article. Very well written.... Please never delete but only improve upon it as we always do.

And all hail rustyrale for the mormon war stub. WOOT go me.. Sorry for digressing. 108.247.104.253 (talk) 10:37, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Political affiliations don't need to be overemphasized in this article
It's enough that the candidate sheriffs' partisans are written about, that's fine. However, continually affiliating one party with a side, is turning this article about a gunfight into a political stage, which this article isn't. It is as if it's an attempt to smear a party, in a non-political article. - Sidelight 12 Talk 04:22, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's the reality of the situation. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery and the South.  Lincoln's Republican Party brought the US both the emancipation of the slaves and the Civil Rights Act of 1957.  This conflict was between Northern carpet baggers and diseffected southerners.   --Hutcher (talk) 00:45, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Tombstone jurisdiction
Asen.wikipedia.org article clarify the jurisdictions involved. The action all took place in Tombstone (town or city) within the town limits (?); the article on Tombstone said it was founded 1879 and refers to Tombstone Ordinances No 7 & 9; but was 1879 when Tombstone was incorporated with a mayor and town marshal? The surrounding Cochise County where the "Cowboys" were from had recently (earlier in 1881) been incorporated out of Pima County, Arizona. And Virgil Earp held a federal appointment as Deputy US Marshal from 1879, was that from the Arizona Territory Governor? Hugo999 (talk) 02:14, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Tombstone was incorporated with mayor and town-marsall in 1879, and officially became a city when its population went over 1000 in 1880 (thus town-marshal simply became city-marshal, but the office is better known as police chief and this title was used at the time also). The countryside outside Tombstone was under two jurisdictions-- at the county level by the Sheriff's office (exactly as today). With Cochise Co. having split off, this was Behan's turf (he is the first Cochise Co. sheriff), and it was Democratic and Southern and rural, quite unlike the town itself. There were a lot of stockraisers out there who were originally from Texas, and had been sympathetic to the Confederacy. The second level of jurisdiction was at the territorial level, and that indeed was the US marshal's office. The territory Marshal was Crawley Dake (a wonderful name), with the deputy being Virgil (I believe he was appointed by Dake, not directly by Governor Fremont; but Fremont did appoint Dake). So in the end you see the set-up for the conflict. The city-cops AND the feds are all Yankie/Republican/businessmen. The countryside and sheriff are basically Southerners, Democrats, and cowboys. The O.K. Corral fight has subtexts of the Civil War, which had ended only 16 years previously (and which Virgil had actually fought in). S  B Harris 20:27, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I am not clear on the relative jurisdictions & authorities of the Marshall vs. the Sheriff (Johnny Behan). Behan refused to help the Earps, but I don't know if his office either required him or prevented him from doing so. 01:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sussmanbern (talk • contribs)
 * Town marshals tended to have jurisdictions within town or city limits, but there were typically "reciprocity" agreements (either formal or informal) allowing county law enforcement to function within city limits. That of course doesn't mean that they would have, or would feel compelled to. You can see a similar situation arising in Dodge City, KS, and some of the other Kansas cattle towns. Quite often one faction would control one level of law enforcement, while their rivals had the other. In terms of federal law enforcement, any deputy U.S. marshal would have been appointed (or actually hired) by the Federal Marshal, not a territorial governor. Fremont might have had a hand in Dake's nomination, but marshals were placed by Presidential appointment and then confirmed by the Senate.Intothatdarkness (talk) 14:49, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

¶ I am embarrassed by my ignorance, but I wish someone would add a sentence or two in the text (rather than a link to other articles) to clarify the authority and the differences of the various official personages involved: sheriff, marshal, constable, etc. Sussmanbern (talk) 13:21, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Dramatizations
I think it is worth mentioning that, although the shootout at the OK Corral has been depicted in more than a dozen movies, seldom has it been presented accurately. In a number of films, the shootout is at dawn, the corral is in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by nothing but cactus and tumbleweed. The relative position, equipment, and even number of participants - not to mention the number and identity of the casualties - are almost always contrary to fact. For example, the famous 1957 movie has Wyatt (Burt Lancaster) chase one of the Cowboys into a nearby house and shoot him on an upper floor! Someone with too much time on his hands could patch together clips from several movies to have a Youtube video showing how different various dramatizations have been. Sussmanbern (talk) 01:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC) ¶  Oddly enough, one of the more accurate dramatizations of the gunfight and the events leading up to it was, surprisingly, in the Hugh O'Brian TV series in 1961 - and included in a TV clip-show movie in 1994. Even that dramatization could not avoid one serious defect - the actual youthfulness of the Earp gang (Wyatt was 33, Holliday was 30).Sussmanbern (talk) 13:33, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It would be nice to have an embedded list (WP:EMBED) at the end of the article, but it's beyond this articles calling to critique them all. It's rather obvious why these things are not very accurate-- we don't really know exactly what happened, but we do know that it all happened in about half a minute. Not much time there for dramatization, unless you do it in slo-mo. S  B Harris 19:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

¶ It was a semi-whimsical suggestion to have an article (or part of this article) dealing with the dramatizations, but it might be interesting reading. In one of the more famous movies, My Darling Clementine, the gunfight is a scheduled duel at dawn, the corral is on the edge of the wilderness, the Earps approach from a multitude of directions, the Clantons are led by the (Walter Brennan) grandfather (who died two years before the event) and all the Clantons are killed, and so is Holliday (Victor Mature) - who was described as a Boston surgeon instead of a Georgia dentist. In the movie, Doc, all the Clantons are killed - and Earp (Harris Yulin) makes a speech to the assembled onlookers about the rule of law. In The Hour of the Gun, the gunfight intrudes on a Clanton strategy session and one of the Clantons (Robert Ryan) slickly withdraws to a safe haven. Etc. Sussmanbern (talk) 13:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "rasmussen": From Wyatt Earp:  From George E. Goodfellow:  

Reference named "woog": From Earp Vendetta Ride:  From Tom McLaury:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 08:27, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Article split
The article is long enough to merit a split. I think the entire section about the Spicer hearing (including the aftermath) is a natural division. But I wonder what a suitable article title might be. "Spicer hearing" may not be informative enough for anyone unfamiliar with the subject. What about "O. K. Corral Spicer Hearing"? Any other suggestions? — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 22:24, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Why not something like "O.K. Corral Aftermath" if there's enough content to support it? Given the way events cascaded after the actual fight, it makes sense to break it out (especially since Tombstone really becomes secondary after that). Intothatdarkness 17:14, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Maybe "OK Corral Inquest". Sussmanbern (talk) 13:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I completed the split and titled the new article O.K. Corral hearing and aftermath. — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 19:15, 23 April 2015 (UTC)


 * ¶ At the risk of belaboring this topic, I'd like to see a more-or-less expansive discussion of how the Gunfight has been portrayed in film and drama. There have been, to my knowledge, at least a dozen film/TV dramatizations of the Gunfight, almost all of them containing actions contrary to known fact, and it might be interesting, informative, or entertaining to have this discussed in some detail, if only to demonstrate that the popular "memory" of this notorious event is at odds with the original event. E.g., those who remember it from the 1946 Henry Fonda/Victor Mature movie, My Darling Clementine, "remember" that Doc Holliday - "a Boston surgeon" - was killed in the gunfight, as well as ALL the members of the Clanton familty - including "Old Man Clanton", in a corral surrounded by the wilderness (Holliday was actually a Georgia dentist, Old Man Clanton had died years earlier); those who remember it from the 1957 Burt Lancaster movie "remember" the Earp group crawling on their bellies up a creek bed (in a layout very similar to the Fonda movie), setting fire to a covered wagon, shooting from a multitude of hiding places, and Wyatt Earp chasing Billy Clanton into a neigboring building and Doc Holliday shooting him on a staircase - stretching a 45 second event into ten minutes; those who remember it from the 1971 Stacy Keach movie, Doc, "remember" that Wyatt Earp delivered an impromptu speech on law and order to a dozen townspeople who came to the corral at the edge of the wilderness at the end of the gunfight.  Oddly enough, the Hugh O'Brien TV series had a fairly accurate portrayal of the event - apart from the fact that Doc Holliday and others on his side were presented as very much older then actuality. Sussmanbern (talk) 01:36, 25 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree, there's plenty of modern analysis and discussion about impact of the shoot out on film and TV. This could be (and ought to be IMO) a separate article. I've considered it but have other priorities for the foreseeable future and I'm limiting new projects. But I encourage you to go for it. There's plenty of existing references in this article and [{Wyatt Earp]] that could be used to source the new article. — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 18:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Shotgun brand carried by Virgil
El Mirage has twice added a information about the brand of shotgun carried by Virgil Earp during the confrontation: here and here While the source he cites may be reputable, there isn't an agreement on the shotgun brand, as stated in this reference to the OK Corral shootout in Guns of the Lincoln County War, which states:


 * "Both Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are said to have owned Greener shotguns. According to Graham Greener, the current director of the company, both guns were special ordered and made to the respective men’s specifications. Holliday is claimed by some to have carried his 10 gauge double barrel lever lock Greener at the OK Corral gunfight, which City Marshal Virgil Earp handed off to him before the shooting commenced. However, the best information available at this time is that Virgil Earp picked up a Meteor brand shotgun from the Wells Fargo office on the way to the fight and handed it off to Holliday."

The author of the book cited above references the same book The Greener Story by Graham Greener, who is (or was) a director of W. W. Greener, as referenced by El Mirage. While Graham Greener would probably like it very much if his shotguns were associated with the Gunfight at the OK Corral, his book about his company is the only source for this claim, and his claim is therefore subject to some suspicion as to its origins.

So it's evident that the brand of the shotgun is subject to dispute. In any case, the brand of gun carried by one of the participants in the battle is definitely trivia and it's not pertinent to the overall article. I'm reverting his edit for the second time and asking El Mirage to carry the discussion forward here if desired. — btphelps (talk to me) (what I've done) 20:12, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

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